It might have looked large in the dark and when attached to dry land but, out in the open water, its dimensions seemed to have shrunk. Jack Wilson and I were standing on a relatively uncluttered area of deck. To our backs was the entrance to the great cabin where we’d got so disgracefully drunk last night. The cabin was part of a larger structure at the back end — or rather to the aft — of the boat. This was balanced by another structure at the front end. Overhead, the sails clattered and banged in the tearing breeze, while the three masts supporting them groaned in their housing. The boat progressed through the water, not smoothly but as if it were hammering out its path like a smith beating out a piece of iron. From the position of the sun in the sky it was still quite early in the day.
A lad passed us and I grabbed him by the elbow and demanded to know where we were. He looked about in confusion as if the question was meaningless.
‘On the river,’ he said eventually.
‘Where are we going?’
‘France.’
He shook himself free of my grip and went off about his business.
There were a couple of older sailors only a few yards away, half hanging over the side while they fiddled with some ropes attached to the largest of the sails on the centre mast. They took no notice of us, may not even have been aware that we were there, but their posture put an idea into my head, unfortunately. I rushed to the opposite side and, clutching on to the bulwark, cast the contents of my stomach on to the waters. Angled into the wind, I only narrowly avoided receiving them back in my face. I hung there, chest heaving, eyes streaming, clinging on for dear life, terrified of the racing waters down below.
When I turned back, it was to see a half-familiar face. There was a hint of pleasure on it, pleasure at my discomfort, that is. I recognized Colin Case, brother to the doctor and captain of the Argo.
‘Even the most lubberly fellows can usually hold off until the open sea,’ he said.
‘You must put in to land at once,’ I said, aware that I was not cutting a dignified figure.
‘Why?’
‘To let us off,’ said Jack Wilson. ‘We are from the King’s Men and have work to do in London.’
‘And who will pay me for the lost time? We have a favouring wind and we are running with the tide. No, we are not going to “put in” for the King’s Men or anyone else’s men.’
‘I shall speak to your brother,’ I said. ‘He has chartered this boat.’
‘Please yourself,’ said the shipmaster, jerking his thumb in the direction of the aft cabin before tugging his hat over his ears and turning his attention to the sailors still struggling with the rope.
‘Wait a moment, Nick,’ said Jack. ‘Don’t go storming in there. Think a moment. There is something very odd about where we find ourselves.’
‘How so? I’m going to give Dr Case a piece of my mind. He is responsible for… for luring us on board and plying us with drink until we were incapable of movement.’
‘Luring us? We had no responsibility at all for our plight, I suppose. But you are right even so, Nick. It is as if Dr Case deliberately set out to get us to accompany him back to this boat and then to cause us to stay on board after hours.’
I remembered that Case had seemed watchful yesterday evening while we were leaving the Middle Temple precincts, but I could not see how this would make him want our company. Unless…
My thoughts were interrupted by Jack’s tugging at my sleeve. He cast his eyes upward. We were standing in the shelter of what I later learned was called the aftercastle. There was a figure half protected by some housing at the far end who I assumed was the helmsman. But there was another figure by the railing at the near end, and he was staring at Jack and me, very intently, as if wondering what we were doing on the boat. He was dressed not like a mariner in a jerkin and slop-hose but well wrapped up in a cloak while his head was enveloped by a hood. Nevertheless, I sensed his eyes boring into us. After a moment, he turned away towards the stern of the boat.
‘Who was that?’
‘No idea,’ I said. ‘We must confront this doctor.’
Jack and I clattered down the steps and burst into the great cabin. There was no sign of Dr Case, but the door to the little inner cabin was ajar and, spurred by our anger and the sound of someone clearing his throat from within, we crowded to the door, which opened outward. The physician was half sitting, half lying on the bed, knees drawn up, a large book balanced on them. He looked up as if annoyed to be disturbed. The cabin was compact but the items in it — a bed, a stool, a chest that could double as a table — were neatly arranged. There was a casement window a couple of feet from the end of the bed. Perhaps the captain enjoyed waking up in the morning and seeing from the comfort of his bed the waters the boat had just crossed over. More than the furniture, it was the casement that gave an odd domestic note to this chamber, as though it was inside a cottage and not aboard a seagoing vessel.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Jonathan Case. ‘I am glad to see you have recovered from last night’s potations. It was impossible to make you stand up, let alone walk, indeed almost impossible to rouse you both. I thought players had harder heads. We might have, ah, deposited you on Botolph’s Wharf before we left but, considering the state you were in, I’m not sure you would have still been alive by daybreak. And even if you had been allowed to go on living, you would have been deprived of any items of value you were carrying, any items at all, in fact.’
This was all true enough. There are human rats on the wharfs as well as animal ones. But it didn’t satisfy me. I felt my anger sparking afresh, as Case delivered this meandering speech from the comfort of his bed. He was showing no ill effects from the previous evening, and the suspicion grew that he had plied us with drink while being abstemious himself.
‘So we had to take you down to the hold to sleep it off,’ he added. ‘No room in here. Yet you were better off in the hold than you would have been in the mariners’ quarters in the fo’c’s’le. Very squalid across there.’
I wondered about all those little sleeping nooks in the cabin which Case had demonstrated to us the previous evening, but there were other, more urgent protests to make.
‘Dr Case, you must tell the captain, tell your brother, to put into shore straight away so that we can disembark.’
‘Speak direct to my brother yourself,’ said the physician. ‘He is the captain, as you say. But I can imagine what his answer will be. Time and tide wait for no man…’
By now I felt almost murderous towards Case. Jack must have sensed this, for he put out a hand as if to restrain me.
‘Dr Case,’ said my friend, ‘I realize that we have brought this on ourselves, Nick and I, by being stupid enough to get blind drunk on board last night. But our company was sought by you, very pressingly, and we are your guests. Yet we are reluctant guests. Indeed, we have a livelihood to earn on land at this very instant-’
‘And you will be fined a shilling if you are late for rehearsals. Gentlemen, I will do what I can. We will likely have to put in for fresh water before we reach France and you may be put ashore then. Since I am partly responsible for where you find yourselves, I will write a letter to old Dick Burbage explaining the circumstances and pleading for you. I cannot say fairer than that.’
I wasn’t mollified, not at all. I did not like the idea of slinking back to London, bearing a letter which must make us look like a couple of greenhorns carried off to sea by mistake. I visualized myself tearing up the letter to ‘old Dick Burbage’ and scattering the pieces to the winds. Jack Wilson and I weren’t likely to lose our posts and nor would the King’s Men be seriously inconvenienced by our brief absence, since they were adept at filling holes. And even members of the leading company in the land are not obliged to behave well at all times; a few have found themselves in clink or disgrace for worse reasons than ours. Nevertheless, Jack and I would be the butt of plenty of jokes. Oddly, this was almost a more dire prospect than being ferried willy-nilly across to France. Better to pretend that we were voluntary absentees from our work.